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LAN & WAN How To

This process applies to routers tested after 15 May 2016. The previous process can be found here.

Updated 1/29/17 - Removed UDP tests due to process error

It has been just over six years (!) since we last revised our wired router test process. Since then, many routers now routinely max out our simple throughput tests. So it's time to work these products a lot harder.

The new process does away with the pair of computers and IxChariot, instead using QA Cafe's NTA1000, and flagship CDRouter router test solution.

QA Cafe NTA1000

CDRouter Overview

Setup

We test all routers by directly connecting WAN and LAN ports to the NTA1000's Gigabit Ethernet ports. Note the same test setup is used for both wired-only and wireless routers, i.e. the wireless portion of wireless routers is not involved in this testing.

We do not test LAN - LAN, i.e. the router's switch, performance. The switch chips used in today's routers all support non-blocking wire-speed performance.

Update 1/27/17: UDP benchmarks were removed when it was found incorrect versions of the UDP benchmark tests were run for many of the products tested.

Each test is run with 10 simultaneous connections with each connection presenting a 95 Mbps load. Each test runs for 5 minutes. Note that CDRouter uses iperf to measure throughput.

For TCP throughput tests, we report throughput and retries. For UDP throughput tests, we report throughput and % packet loss. CDRouter reports up and download throughput separately for the bidirectional tests. The Router Charts bidirectional benchmarks present the sum of the separate results.

We have retired the Maximum Simultaneous Connection test. We now test whether 3,000 simultaneous TCP and UDP sessions are supported in separate tests. This new test is actually harder than the previous maximum connection test because it opens the connections over a longer period of time, then goes back and checks they are still open.

Functional Tests

CDRouter's primary focus is router functional testing. We run 245 tests, checking DNS, DHCP, UPnP, Xbox, NAT, firewall and other functions. We also run nmap scans from LAN and WAN to check for open ports. You can download a PDF of the full test list to see exactly what we run. Note we start the test by throwing a series of DoS attacks at the router, giving it 30 seconds to recover from each one.

In the Router Charts, we report the results in the Router Functional benchmark as a % of tests passing. The list of failing tests with explanation is noted in the product review.